Pen-and-paper? No, but I know that group there consisted from cleric, rogue, wizard and 5 warriors (with possible alterations). 5(!) tanks in one party, colliding with mobs, forming physical meatshield. It's a bad example.

Pen-and-paper? No, but I know that group there consisted from cleric, rogue, wizard and 5 warriors (with possible alterations). 5(!) tanks in one party, colliding with mobs, forming physical meatshield. It's a bad example.

Where in your mind does it make sense that a boss would attack that one guy that just doesn't seem to die and does very little damage where as this fragile little caster is raping it's health?

The trinity system trivializes bosses because all the DPS and healers have to worry about is staying out of bad shit. THAT'S IT. That's pretty much every damn WoW boss wrapped up into one statement. Tank boss here. Melee stand here. Casters and Healers stand here. Fire spawns there. Move from it.

Removing the dedicated tank (which I repeat, Guild Wars 1 didn't have, I suggest you go try it out) makes it to where everyone has to watch out for themselves, avoid taking damage as much direct damage as possible (by using avoidance skills) and heal themselves. All while making sure the rest of the group is doing fine.

Pen-and-paper? No, but I know that group there consisted from cleric, rogue, wizard and 5 warriors (with possible alterations). 5(!) tanks in one party, colliding with mobs, forming physical meatshield. It's a bad example.

5 warriors? what?
Image you have group of Ranger, rogue, bard and wizard... Does this mean this group can't handle every situations just because they lack of dedicated healer or tank?

It's very different approach in designing encounters indeed. But no trinity system also allow more freedom for developers. These encounters are much more dynamic because you never know what will happen within seconds. You have to adapt. In trinity and agro system? 99% of fights are same.. Tank...grab mobs, healer..keep him alive..others..just burn them down.. over and over and over again. Boss fights are full of gimicks to make life of players a bit difficult, but core is same. I know you will argue that bosses fights are always different. It's okey. If you never played anything without trinity system, I understand it's hard to see how it works.

IIRC, one of the devs mentioned running a dungeon with five warriors (or was it five rangers? Don't remember. The point is "bring the player, not the class") and they did just fine. So clearly, GW2 doesn't need tanks (or dedicated healers). GW1 didn't need tanks either, as people have been pointing out (I've done every area in the game and not once did I bring a tank when using heroes/henchies and not once were any of my live party members specced as a tank; GW players bring warriors and dervs for damage), though it did have dedicated healers. The reliance on healers, especially in Guild vs Guild matches, was what made ArenaNet take them out in GW2.

I'm looking forward to see how the game'll play without a dedicated healer class, but I'm not worried about not having tanks as that's pretty much the status quo for me. I've played GW1 for over five years and I still think tanks in WoW are weird

Tried guildwars for 3 hours 15 minutes (bonus points for guessing how I knew it), then removed because it was boring as hell. And guess what, I had a dedicated tank hireling and dedicated healer hireling there.

So what will stop the boss from charging ranged players and killing them in 3 seconds when there are no tanks? Enlighten me, please.

Tried guildwars for 3 hours 15 minutes (bonus points for guessing how I knew it), then removed because it was boring as hell. And guess what, I had a dedicated tank hireling and dedicated healer hireling there.

So what will stop the boss from charging ranged players and killing them in 3 seconds when there are no tanks? Enlighten me, please.

first.. Boss wont probably one shoot ranger like in WoW ...
But anyway...Ranger can avoid damage altogether.. Even when ranger will be hit, he can heal himself. Also..there are other members. Maybe Warrior will just put himself into the charge, enable shield stance and eat charge damage for him? Or Guardian will create force wall to block boss movement? Or maybe elementalist will cast water geyser to knockback boss for few meters but just enough to give ranger second or two to react?

And even if Ranger will die, they can still Rally him during the combat if they can handle situation in some way. Or manually resurrecting. There is tons of options.

Nobody's saying GW1 didn't have dedicated healers. But there weren't dedicated tanks and the warrior henchman you hired was probably Stefan*, who is most assuredly not a tank.

When you are soloing in GW2, you will be responsible for making sure you don't get stomped, like you are in WoW. When you're grouping in GW2, you will still be responsible for your own health, but your party members will also have skills that help mitigate incoming damage. Eles can put up Static Fields that stun enemies who try to pass through, Guardians will have block skills, Thieves and Eles and probably other classes have skills that blind the enemy, causing them to miss. Furthermore, you can dodge and use the terrain to your advantage. Bosses will probably work a lot like they did in GW1, i.e. they went after the target with the lowest armor or health, usually, although I doubt it'll work EXACTLY like it did in GW1 because of the lack of healers. Snares and cripples and launches and knockdowns and knockbacks will aid people in staying out of range temporarily so they can heal up a little before heading back into the fight. I don't see how this is a difficult concept to understand.

Tried guildwars for 3 hours 15 minutes (bonus points for guessing how I knew it), then removed because it was boring as hell. And guess what, I had a dedicated tank hireling and dedicated healer hireling there.

So what will stop the boss from charging ranged players and killing them in 3 seconds when there are no tanks? Enlighten me, please.

They are called henchemen and none of them tanked. If you had made it past the starting area, you would have known that.

Well the ranger can stay and get hit or do the smarter thing and dodge it. They could use a defensive ability. If the ranger was low on health and mana, someone else could move into the path of the boss and take the hit, this means that a necro or elementalist could take the hit to help out the ranger if their health was up. Someone could cripple the boss to slow it down or blind the boss so that it's next attack misses. You know, make use of conditions. Someone could use a knock back on the boss to give the ranger another second or two to move. The ranger could have his/her pet get in the way of the boss. Or the ranger could die and need rezzed/rallied since neither the ranger nor his/her group made good use of their abilities.

Tried guildwars for 3 hours 15 minutes (bonus points for guessing how I knew it), then removed because it was boring as hell. And guess what, I had a dedicated tank hireling and dedicated healer hireling there.

So what will stop the boss from charging ranged players and killing them in 3 seconds when there are no tanks? Enlighten me, please.

Are you equating anything with a shield as a tank? Cause you're so wrong... Riposte Swords warriors and Triple Attack Axe warriors were some of the highest DPS specs you could play.

As for keeping the boss from gimping the ranged, you're still thinking of an aggro system, which guild wars 2 wont have. What will happen is that caster will pop defensive ability (whirling defense, flame wall or earth ward, etc) and the boss will (most likely, haven't played its still in development you know) switch targets.

As for what Mid said about "tank" spec, the most prominent ones were W/ Me Signet Warriors that used skills that brought their health and mitigation up incredibly high (highest I've heard of was about 1000 hp or so which was major in a game that had everyone's max level health at 480) and had like one attack skill (a signet attack that caused damage based on the number of signets you had on cooldown).

And Tackhisis, I'm gonna call you out now. Enlighten me on how a Trinity system or tank system makes sense realisticly (which is what 90% of the games on the current market try to make) because I'm pretty sure that a big ass fucking dragon wouldn't care how much noise or what insult to its mother's honor a person could make as opposed to how much another person's damaging it.

As for what Mid said about "tank" spec, the most prominent ones were W/ Me Signet Warriors that used skills that brought their health and mitigation up incredibly high (highest I've heard of was about 1000 hp or so which was major in a game that had everyone's max level health at 480) and had like one attack skill (a signet attack that caused damage based on the number of signets you had on cooldown).

I would like to point out that the big issue with getting your health that high means that when playing as a team, you aren't considered the primary target. Even in GW1, most enemies would rather go after the weaker characters (lower health/armor) or the healers. If the enemy is melee creature and you use a defensive skill that aides against melee, then that enemy will often seek another target when possible.

I would like to point out that the big issue with getting your health that high means that when playing as a team, you aren't considered the primary target. Even in GW1, most enemies would rather go after the weaker characters (lower health/armor) or the healers. If the enemy is melee creature and you use a defensive skill that aides against melee, then that enemy will often seek another target when possible.

Exactly, the only time I've ever seen that particular build work was in a few Alliance Battles as a flag carrier.

I'm still waiting for concept of proper boss design without tanks. Just admit it's impossible. WoW and other games are using them because it is impossible to do other way without trivialing encounter.

Just because your simple, wow spoiled mind can't handle even the thought of it by no means says it is not possible. And this might be a shocker for you, it is this very one trick pony mentality that actually makes encounters in wow so damn easy that they have to think of artificial things like dps minigames (also known as dps rotations) to make the ppl not fall asleep. If all you have to do is stand there and do dmg (and once in a while step out of the puddle under you) THAT is trivializing the encounter. If you have to watch your health (instead of healers doing it for you) and watch the enemy (instead of tanks doing it for you) and help out others (again instead of healers doing it for you) while constantly having to position yourself to avoid as much dmg as possible while doing dps, how is that more trivial than standing there and spamming the sh!t out of your fireball/arcane blast/incinerate/whatever?

How hard a boss hits has nothing to do with how hard an encounter is. Patchwerk was the hardest hitting boss in naxx, still he was a complete joke. Hard hitting bosses are only a matter of equipment and how fast the healer can spam his greater heal. None of both has anything to do with skill. So if you don't need hard hitting bosses for a difficult encounter, why do you think you need a tank for it?

As it has been stated, that was fixed a long, long time ago. Also, when that was viable, items such as those were very, very rare as they existed in only a few areas and a handful of missions. It also took a real player to pick up an item, so henchmen could not do that.

i remember tanking on my elementalist. :P
buying cheapest gear get that thing that lowers your HP with 50

and you sat at 55hp (inc low for GW)
Then you specced into E/Mo and you had a talent wich made you not get hit for more then 10% i believe. so you only got hit by 5.5hp max and you kept your healing skill up wich healed for XX HP per second!

Please don't try convince Tackhisis that the game will work without tanks etc, I'd rather not have his stupid kind in GW2.

Discussing the points he/she is bring up is about more than just trying to convince them. It also provides more information about the game for those that may have had similar questions about it or for those that may have had some doubts on how it would work out. So even if someone like Tackhisis was only trolling, and I am not saying that they are, then they are causing more information about the game to get out that there may have been over looked before. So it is helpful in the long run.

Originally Posted by Chrno

i remember tanking on my elementalist. :P
buying cheapest gear get that thing that lowers your HP with 50

and you sat at 55hp (inc low for GW)
Then you specced into E/Mo and you had a talent wich made you not get hit for more then 10% i believe. so you only got hit by 5.5hp max and you kept your healing skill up wich healed for XX HP per second!

tada you almost couldn't die

ps; i do believe that got nerfed rather soon tho

That was not tanking, that was a farming build. It required to constantly be hit to maintain the costs of the abilities. That meant that you had to solo rather than play with a group. Though there were some duo builds, the other person had to stay back so as to not be attacked. Also, the more creatures hitting you per second, the more healing that was required so you could be killed from pure damage. The original version was pretty much killed early on though bastard version still lives on and is the one everyone knows of.

Interrupts, knock-downs, or enchantment removals would kill anyone going 55 rather quickly. It is because the build is so fragile, that it was never viable for PvP or a lot of the areas in the game.

As for what Mid said about "tank" spec, the most prominent ones were W/ Me Signet Warriors that used skills that brought their health and mitigation up incredibly high (highest I've heard of was about 1000 hp or so which was major in a game that had everyone's max level health at 480) and had like one attack skill (a signet attack that caused damage based on the number of signets you had on cooldown).

Actually the only tanks that existed endgame were elementalists and assassins . Getting your health up was the one thing you could do to make sure to never get hit by any mob. Endgame tanking in gw1 was bodyblocking with an invinci build. So it is not the best example here. Midgame on the other hand showed that you don't need a dedicated tank. But gw1 pve had many flaws and is not at all comparable to what they want to do in gw2. So again, not the best example.

i remember tanking on my elementalist. :P
buying cheapest gear get that thing that lowers your HP with 50

and you sat at 55hp (inc low for GW)
Then you specced into E/Mo and you had a talent wich made you not get hit for more then 10% i believe. so you only got hit by 5.5hp max and you kept your healing skill up wich healed for XX HP per second!

tada you almost couldn't die

ps; i do believe that got nerfed rather soon tho

Perma-Sin's win better.

And no it didn't, 55 Monk's still work, but they gave a few mobs in UW the ability to remove enchantments (i.e. protective spirit, aka that spell that only allows you to take no more than 10% of your max health) so that 55 monk's couldn't just solo farm UW for Ectos and gear...

Double Ranger Traps w/ Famine was sexy as hell though...

Originally Posted by Beetlejuice

Actually the only tanks that existed endgame were elementalists and assassins . Getting your health up was the one thing you could do to make sure to never get hit by any mob. Endgame tanking in gw1 was bodyblocking with an invinci build. So it is not the best example here. Midgame on the other hand showed that you don't need a dedicated tank. But gw1 pve had many flaws and is not at all comparable to what they want to do in gw2. So again, not the best example.

I did a tank-ish build with a W/E as well, I basically just supped up it's energy and used Armor of Earth, Obsidian Armor, and a ward or two, I was slow as hell but I could soak pretty much any Spiker/ Nuker.

There were a lot of possibilities in Guild Wars 1 for sure though, so anything's possible.